A reflection on joining online communities.

In the course of one year, I had 2,905 online sessions and only made five friends. Four of them are no longer in contact, and I am left with one.
진짜 고마워 🙇🏻‍♂️.

ONE.

I had this thought the other day while doing my monthly contemplation and couldn't help but drill it down because, really? A year of effort and only one left? Unbelievable.

To make it sound less depressing—and to make it feel like an achievement—I had to adjust my definition of “friends.” This was necessary; otherwise, I'd go crazy 🫠 Initially, I always thought of friends as a group of people who stick together to achieve the same goal, working on it every day for years. We'd meet daily, have conversations, and share experiences until, eventually, we'd go our separate ways. Simply put, I used to believe that friends were only made in school.

But along the way, my definition of “friends” developed organically. There are academic friends, interest-based friends, internet friends, close friends—and there’s this, I want to call this one group in particular as “ex-friends,” but I'm not sure if that's even a thing. So, instead, I'll just call them the friends-you-only-keep-in-your-Insta-story kind of friends. I think I'll stick to my ground rule that you need at least a year of shared moments to truly call someone a friend. Otherwise, they're just acquaintances.

There are anomalies, though—usually involving internet friends. Sometimes, they skip a few steps and immediately become close friends due to sharing heavy burdens together. Some stay. Most don’t. I think the kindness of a stranger factor plays a huge part here. And, of course, there are always the unrequited friends—the one-sided, feelings-aren't-mutual kind of friendships. I might call them friends, but to them, I’m just an acquaintance. Most of the time, I’m a nobody. Maybe even an enemy. I don’t really factor these into my count.

Sorry—this is impromptu but worth noting, and it also serves as an example. As I'm writing this, an online friend just texted me “Hey Seth, how have you been? How goes your journey getting back into design?” Magical ✨ I think the last time we spoke was six months ago, and now out of nowhere he appeared, keeping me accountable. Not even my IRL friends do that. Ok, continue.

Do I really need friends?

Okay, before we get any further, let me explain why I’m even thinking about all this. I used to be okay being alone. In fact, I’m more of a loner. But at some point in my life, I decided to be more social—mingling here and there both offline and online, trying to be more goal-oriented, and attempting to have a purpose in life. Normally, I’m super chill, just going with the flow, but I guess I got bored. And so, the networking began. It was really awkward at first—switching from introvert to extrovert in an instant, trying to make connections. Luckily, that phase has passed.

Then the pandemic happened. Then my parent got a terminal illness. I took a long career break to sort everything out.

That was the pivotal moment—the reason I wanted to meet more people:
• First, for networking. I was trying to make a comeback to the workforce.
• Second, to keep my brain active—learning a new language and having conversations. Both are recommended ways to help prevent dementia.

I’ve been in and out of different communities and eventually stuck with this language-learning one.

Now what?

Do I have to go through another 6,285 sessions just to have three people more that I can call friends in the next three years? Hold up—I don’t think that number is entirely correct. The total session count is, yes, 2,905, but I know there were good and bad sessions. The disconnected ones. The server issues. The awkward silences. And yet, all of them still counted as sessions. Alright, let’s break it down. I just want to categorize them into three group:
• Neutral sessions (okay-ish conversations, respectful, no preference)
• Good sessions (great conversation flow, people I’d like to meet again)
• Bad sessions (rude people, bad conversation, definitely blocked)
If I divide them evenly, that’s about 969 sessions per category. That’s still a lot. Wow.

Wait, there's one more thing. I just remembered I actually got a job offer during that year! I took it and worked on it—even though it didn't last long, it was enough to keep me going for another few rounds, hoping the same opportunity would pop up. So, to clarify what really happened: "In the course of one year, I had 2,905 online sessions and only made five friends plus one job. Four of them are no longer in contact, and I am left with one."

Out of curiosity, I asked ChatGPT, and I got cooked! Haha. I was wondering if I could increase the odds of these opportunities.

I received good insights, such as:

“Your logic is understandable, but you're assuming a linear relationship between the number of sessions and your results (friends and jobs), which makes it feel like an exhausting numbers game. Relationships and opportunities don't work in a perfectly predictable way—there are ways to improve your odds without just grinding through more sessions.”

“You're thinking of effort as time spent online instead of quality interactions created. Instead of needing 6,285 more sessions, what if you needed just 300 well-optimized ones?”

I don't know, y'all. I'm just trying to understand how this works and whether I'm making any progress, wondering if my plans work or not. I think this is just a good habit for self-improvement, you know?

I'll just focus on the possibility of having good sessions that I hope I can turn into high-quality interactions. I can't offer something that I don't have, I can't be someone that I'm not—which might be favorable to some—but I know that I need to step up my game for my own good. Pretty sure by being my best self it will be beneficial to others as well.